Technical Abstract:
Processes are in pre-commercial stages of development, for separating corn germ prior to fermentation in a dry grind plant. Oil is currently removed from dry mill germ or wet mill germ by crushing for $35-45/ton or by hexane extraction for $20-40/ton (1). These costs, as well as the capital to build an oil recovery facility on site, are significant hurdles to separating corn germ, and then oil, from dry grind plants. The product oil will be worth about $450/ton. Previously we reported laboratory studies of aqueous enzymatic extraction (AEE) of oil from 6 g batches of wet milled corn germ (2). Here we confirm those results for 100 g batches of wet milled corn germ. Aqueous oil separation without enzyme, developed for peanuts, (3), gave yields in the range of 27-37%, similar to results reported earlier (2). The addition of a commercial cellulase enzyme preparation to 100 g batch of wet milled germ resulted in an oil yield of about 75%. This 100 g AEE process is now being modified to extract oil from dry grind corn germ.